"Writer's porn"

I've ordered this book because I'm at this point with my YA novel where...well, frankly, I'm not actively writing it, but I'm ready to. I'm excited about the story and wishing i hadn't gone to California in January so I could take a week and go to some magical place and write. That I might do next year, but this year, I am stuck with the constraints of real life, which means fitting writing in to a full-time job, part-time blogging, freelancing, dating, family, social life, etc. Not easy when you're a natural procrastinator. But I could and do come up with zillions of excuses not to work and none of them are good ones. Ultimately, if you want to do something, you will do it. I know that very, very well.

I read novelist Justine Musk's blog Tribal Writer for inspiration to work, and she writes of Alan Watts' The 90-Day Novel:

I like to think of writing fiction as a difficult and intricate kind of magic.
Magic = skills + art.

You need to learn a rather stunning array of skills, whether it’s the rules of decent grammar or the principles of storytelling, and then you need to transform them into something your own. The dancer becomes the dance. You don’t see the plot points, you only experience story.

So I love to read books and articles about how to write fiction. I think of it as writer’s porn.

So I guess we'll see. My goal is to be done with my novel by Labor Day. I hope this book can guide me in the right direction of how to pull off these characters who are less than half my age and live in an age of technology I couldn't have imaged as a teenager, and barely can now (it's a contemporary, but technology plays a huge role).

You can also check out the90daynovel.com

From the bondage erotica trenches

I have a giant pile of pending and overdue writing, fiction and nonfiction, as well as reading and editing for anthologies, awaiting me. Sometimes the to do lists get so big and scary that I feel instantly paralyzed. Writing even one word feels hopeless, and yet that's what I have to do, and that's what always makes me feel better. I've seen the results of not writing, both the money I didn't make but even worse, the lack it causes inside me, faced with the book I hold in my hands without my essay and photo, or that space on the bookstore shelves where I know my book could've been, if only. It's why I'm such a devotee of Justine Musk's blog Tribal Writer and why I just ordered Steven Pressfield's book Do The Work. Sometimes I need a kick in the ass or, ahem, slap in the face, to force me out of my worst thoughts about myself and into the writing. Money, sadly, is not a motivator. By now, failure looming should be, but it isn't.

I've realized that I like to set goals where I give something up. I'm hoping I can go this year without drinking a drop of alcohol, both because I think it's healthier for me, and simply didn't live up to that goal the last few years. I just decided not to do any more readings, save for Seattle and London, until I finish the YA novel draft I'm working on. That felt like a proactive, good decision, in that being surrounded by people who have, in fact, written a book, only serves to remind me of my lack, and it feels wasteful to me, of both time and money. But that is only half the equation. Giving up doing certain activities will only aid me if I take Pressfield's advice and spend 2 hours a day writing. Or more. I rarely do.

So one of the things I'm working on, that should be no big deal considering how many erotica stories I've already written in the last ten or so years, is for Best Bondage Erotica 2012. I will release the table of contents once it's finalized in a few months, but I can tell you that for the first time for a kinky anthology of mine that wasn't specifically about the topic, the majority of the stories I received, and that are currently in my manuscript, feature male bottoms/submissives/bondees. Which I think is a wonderful and welcome change, but means my story needs to fill the other side of the equation. I am working on two, actually, and one is the kind of story I often write. Playful, cute, fun, kinky. There's feathers and tickling and sadism. And that's great. I like writing those kinds of stories but they feel "light" to me in a sense that the other one I'm working on doesn't. I won't say frivolous, because I think the point of erotica is to arouse and entertain and I think my story will do that.

But the other type of story, the one I am trying to write more of because it makes me feel more "like a writer" is the deeper, darker kind, the ones like "The End" or "Espionage" or the upcoming "Punching Bag," which will be published in Tristan Taormino's anthology Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica. They're intense, dark, heavy, which is perhaps ironic, or perhaps fitting, since the story I'm working on is called "The Weight." It taps into what I love about writing erotica, which is figuring out certain aspects of my kinks in fictional form and articulating them. But no matter how open-minded I try to be, and considering I have a tattoo with the word "open" I'd say I strive for that as much as I can, it's still daunting and unnerving to go there. The lighter, breezier, more playful stories, like "Monica and Me" or "Doing the Dishes," the ones that will get laughs at a reading, are easier on some level because they don't push my buttons. They don't make me uneasy. They don't ever make me wonder, in the deepest recesses of my mind, "What is wrong with me? Why would I fantasize about that?" And one is not better than the other, but I will admit that I'm prejudiced, when it comes to my own writing, toward the darker kind of story. It's where I'm trying to go in my nonfiction too; does this make me look flawed, imperfect, foolish...because I am, and I'm human? Then yes, put it in.

I know that, and I know that's what I gravitate to in pieces I read, the people who, at least, on the page, are unafraid to go there, even if they too have to fake it til they make it. So that's where I'm at this weekend on that one teeny tiny piece. Maybe I'll scrap it, save it for another time, go back to the long, lighter, funnier piece for the Major Media Company that wants my fiction rather than my mini memoir. But I hope I will push myself and try to forget about all the what-ifs, the who-might-read-this-and-think-x, the what-does-this-say-about-me, and instead just bottom to the story and give it all of myself, as openly and guilelessly and freely as I'm capable of.

Modern Love Rejects has launched

My Modern Love rejection, from The New York Times Modern Love section, but of course, goes up tomorrow at Modern Love Rejects. I hesitated over giving permission, even though I'd submitted it, but then I realized, once again, that fear is the ultimate self-sabotage. That even if my essay is foolish and stupid, even if one could say the same about my actions (feel free), I wrote it. I finished it. I tried. The not trying is what makes me despise myself. So, yeah. It makes me feel a little squeamish, but maybe that's a good thing.

So check out the first three Modern Love Rejects, by Samara O'Shea, Kiri Blakeley and Alisa Bowman, and submit your own!

3 Reasons I Don't Give Feedback on Rejected Submissions

Read them at The Nervous Breakdown

Recently, I've noticed an uptick in authors asking for a critique of the stories I've rejected from my anthologies. Most of them ask politely, and I send back the shortest reply I can explaining that I have a rule against giving any sort of critique. This latest round of requests made me wonder if perhaps I was being too harsh, but then I realized that there are very good reasons for me to refuse. Here are the top three:

Time

Keep reading at The Nervous Breakdown

Can't Think Straight author Kiri Blakeley on professional jealousy

I liked this column by Kiri Blakeley on professional jealousy, such as bookstore placement of Rachel Shukert's books (my sex column tomorrow is on jealousy regarding relationships) - it's funny because I'm jealous that her publisher got her video of her reading at In The Flesh posted on Barnes & Noble while Amazon basically has ignored my Passion video that I had recut just for them. But then I tell myself that the two are unrelated, and that it's true, there is literally not a thing I can do about that, except choose whether or not making book trailers is worth it financially in future. Here's what Kiri had to say:

When it comes to other women, however, I merely ask myself the questions. I don’t have the answers. Why one person gets something that you don’t is entirely out of our control the vast majority of the time, and there have been plenty of times I have accomplished something that other writers haven’t. Somewhere, some woman might even be thinking, “Why does that Kiri Blakeley get to rant on Forbes and I don’t?”

Women, however, are not supposed to be jealous of other women. It’s petty, it’s immature, it’s damaging to the notion of sisterhood. Men don’t get jealous of each other—men give each other jobs. Men don’t get “jealous,” they get “healthily competitive.”

But I say hoo-ha to all of that. Let’s call it what it really is.

“Jealousy, if channeled positively, can do wonders,” says Hannah Seligson, author of New Girl On the Job: Advice From the Trenches. Seligson, for example, was jealous of people who got their bylines in the New York Times (the newspaper of record also seems to be the newspaper of bitter envy). So Seligson made it her goal to get her name in there too. Eventually, she became a regular Times contributor.

And if you missed it, you can read my interview with Kiri Blakely at SexIs.

Building a personal brand as a writer and living up to the best of your Evil Plans

Funnily enough, on a weekend when I decided to embrace Hugh MacLeod's brilliant new book Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination, which spoke to me about not being afraid and letting my fears derail me from living up to my potential (and flaking on $1,000 assignments!), and write about how in 1999 I was a failed law student with no clue what to do with my life and now, I'm, well, a writer and blogger and editor and event organizer, I came across this post on building a personal brand as a writer by Lisabet Sarai:

In the realm of erotica, I consider Rachel Kramer Bussel an example of effective brand-building. Pretty much anyone who reads erotica will be familiar with the dozens of anthologies she has edited, many focused on kink or fetishes. Rachel builds her brand not only through her publications but also through readings, parties and an amazingly active presences in the blogosphere. Just say “cupcake” or “spanking” to any erotica reader and Rachel's name is likely to come to mind.

Hopefully you will soon be able to read 5,000+ words from me on this very topic; well, in a memoir form as I figure out how it was I got here and what happens when "sex writers grow up." More on that when...I get the word, hopefully the good word.

I may write more about Evil Plans, especially the chapter on why it's good to have people hate you. It, along with MacLeod's previous book, Ignore Everybody, are essential shots in the arm for those of us who are waffling about how to embrace being unique. I have that problem all the time; I want to do things the way everyone else is doing them. I assume that they know something I don't, rather than that we are each pursuing our work and life goals in our own ways. I think because I never had a "plan," just started sending out erotica stories, and grew this life organically, I often am unsure about how wholeheartedly to embrace it, how to figure out where I've erred from where I've found success (or only seeing the former). So I'm trying hard to work on figuring out what I do know and writing those things down while being open to learning, learning, learning. Do visit Gaping Void to see more of his work, and sign up for a free daily cartoon and lots of both inspiration and practical tips on how to best utilize your creativity for your own benefit, rather than letting your fears (of success or failure) defeat you.



My review:

In the same concise but profound manner he used in Ignore Everybody, Hugh MacLeod gives artists and businesspeople a way of looking at the world that values them and their own talent, providing examples and encouragement on the path to building your own evil plan. He doesn't just throw random pronouncements out, but backs them up with examples from his own career and those of others he's known or read about who've forged their own paths, along with examples of his business-card cartoons.

Some of the biggest lessons I got out of this book is that it's okay, welcome, in fact, to have enemies; doing so means you are getting known, and provoking people. I also got the message that enacting your evil plan is not "easy," and does mean forging ahead and not following the pack. I've struggled with trying to figure out how to be "unique" and true to myself while also, to some degree, not wanting to rock the boat, and I read this book to try to gain some insight into how to proceed with a career that combines various tasks (editing, writing, blogging, event organizing) and building a personal "brand" (even though I kindof hate that word when applied to myself). I think I've been the opposite of a "waker" and am grateful to this book for waking me up to the possibilities, to facing the parts of writing that I love and going for them full-bore, rather than getting in my own way all the time. This is an excellent book for anyone looking for motivation, from someone who's lived it and gone on to succeed on his own terms.

Having sex versus writing about sex

These days I'm not having sex, but I am still writing about it, via journalism, my SexIs Magazine column and lots of erotica. I thought this really interesting Alexis on the Sexes column by my friend Alexis McKinnis brought up a lot of good points, and is relevant no matter what subject you write about, though sex is especially fraught. How do you tell someone you're just not that into their writing when they're your friend? She also gave me some fabulous compliments, so thank you back! And Surrender is my 38th anthology - with the release of Obsessed, Women in Lust and Best Bondage Erotica 2012 later this year, I'll have over 40 anthologies out!

Just because someone has good sex doesn't mean he or she is able to skillfully write about it the morning after. I own bookshelves full of erotic short stories and novels, fiction and nonfiction, and I'd estimate approximately 10 percent of it is even worth rereading. I can't even imagine what a frustrating job someone like Rachel Kramer Bussel must have. She has edited nearly 30 anthologies, each packed with dozens of erotic short stories gleaned from hundreds of open-call submissions. I don't know how she's going to feel about me comparing her to a mainstream female porn star, but I'm about to, anyway: Imagine being subjected to mediocre to just plain bad sexual stimulation for hours and, if you're lucky, maybe something will get you off by the end of the workday. Rachel, if you're reading this, thank you for working so hard to make the world a better place.

Novels and short stories in mental health and running terms according to John McCaffrey

From Bang the Keys author Jill Dearman's interview with John McCaffrey at the Barnes & Noble site - found via Jill's site bangthekeys.com:

JD: How is writing a novel different from writing a short story?

JM: I also work in the mental health field, and I often think that writing a novel is like being in long-term therapy, where you lay on the couch twice a week and sob about the time your mother made you wear a bib to school (not that that happened to me). Short story writing, on the other hand, is like being in crisis counseling – you just need a few sessions to get through a tough period. I’ll spin another analogy - I feel you must approach the writing of a novel with the determination of a marathon runner, prepare for it with diligence, and then once the gun sounds fight to the finish line. A short story is more a sprint, and a good sprinter runs on nerve just as much as legs. I also think that unlike a short story you can meander in a novel, take more sidetracks, since the reader has made a commitment to a longer work, and thus will conceivable go with you in your fictional travels – as long as you invite them nicely.

3 things for you to read by Penelope Trunk, Susannah Breslin and Sarah Ockler

I've been meaning to start 2 new short daily posts here, one being "Tips," with a link to something I think is useful, and "5 Great Things About Today," which ideally I'd post every night as a way to keep me from sounding so morose, as I tend to do. Maybe tonight can be the first!

But before that, I wanted to share 3 quick links:

"Gold digging Web 2.0 style" by Penelope Trunk, who I mentioned in my "Is Social Media Ruining Your Sex Life?" column, and she commented and added that link.

In "I Got Downsized" at Thought Catalog, Susannah Breslin offers up five things she could possibly do to make money.

I'll leave you with "You're Not a Thing: 10 Anti-Insanity Tips for Writers by YA author Sarah Ockler, author of Twenty Boy Summer and Fixing Delilah - here's one of her tips, one I particularly needed to stop obsessing over why Amazon hasn't posted my Passion book trailer yet and a bunch of other things it seems like "everyone else" is doing:

Stop comparing. Unless you’re self-published, it’s unlikely that you’ll have accurate, up-to-date sales data at any given point. And what’s a good number, anyway? 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 copies sold might be phenomenal for one book, abysmal for another. This author got on a 10-city tour, that one got a dedicated Web site, this one got an ad in the NYT, that one is visiting every school in the country, this one got a 6-figure advance, that one got less… well? Every book is different and requires different marketing. You don’t always know what’s going on behind the scenes at your publisher, but even that doesn’t matter. Maybe you got the platinum edition marketing campaign or maybe you got utterly forgotten, but comparing anything to other authors doesn’t make the next book happen. I’ll tell you what it does make happen: crazy! Now stop looking at so-and-so’s Amazon rank and go work on your manuscript!

I am not a creative badass, but I aspire to be

Ever since reading her essay in Marie Claire about her divorce from Elon Musk, I’ve been following Justine Musk, and even though I haven’t delved into her fiction yet, her blog is a constant source of inspiration. Lately I’ve been thinking so much about self-sabotage and what the source of it is for me, because it’s not any isolated incident. It’s a consistent, repeated process, a way of drawing myself back from the brink of success whenever it dares wave at me. I shrink away as if it’s something horrible, as if I don’t deserve it, and I think part of it for me is the fear of being different. That might sound ridiculous because, the fact is, by dint of doing what I do, by having dropped out of law school, a safe, seemingly easy but actually crazy hard path, and then not only writing about sex, but writing about my personal life, exposing truths and my flaws and my body along with my fears, I have chosen an unconventional path.

And I have a love/hate relationship with that path. I have trouble seeing the good in the things I do that are different. I am constantly looking for mentors and people to emulate, and sometimes it takes those very mentors coming to me and asking questions, or telling me they are proud of me, for me to unravel all of that not-so-deep-down self-hatred and realize that the unconventional path is not necessarily a bad one.

It’s confusing in so many ways, not least of which because there are no true roadmaps. I don’t necessarily feel like I’m floundering, but every once in a while I look around and think, “How the hell did I get here?” I really don’t know, and I’m back to being that girl who worked at 2 Park and got in trouble for wearing sneakers or talking on the phone. Sometimes, though I hated that job, I want to be that girl because she was anonymous. Much as I’d like to think I am, I’m not, not really. And that’s at the heart of my discomfort: It will never sound anything but self-aggrandizing to me to say I’m not anonymous. And of course a writer wants to be read; of course…and yet, not always. Not always with the level of scrutiny I am. Not always when the joy of creating something new from a blank page morphs into feeling like I need to defend not just my body of work, but myself. Not always when it creates a very clear disconnect between my “persona” and how I see myself.

Justine Musk writes in a post on how to be a creative badass*:

To produce good work, you need to dive beneath the surface of things. You need to “go there” in a way that we specifically train ourselves not to do in day-to-day life. We believe that if we reveal too much, we’ll expose ourselves as unworthy. Shameful. But it’s shame that keeps us isolated, silent, and disconnected from each other. Part of believing that you have something to say is flying in the face of all that. When you lean into what discomforts you, what scares you, you’re getting to the good, original stuff.

I get that, completely. I feel like sometimes I live and breathe that shame and have no idea how to get rid of it. It’s confusing because on the one hand I am go go go, trying to get people to write about me at, say, my college paper, where I was once rejected as a columnist, where I wrote letters to the editor, where I never ever ever thought I’d be writing about sex for a living. I am happy when I’m at the post office sending out dozens of copies of my new book; that feels healthy, familiar, something I know how to do: give things away. Or, to use a horrible word, marketing. Horrible because that is part of the “persona” and me, well, I like to think of it as creative, as taking a tool that the big people use, like Amazon Prime, and scaling it down to my level.

I am rambling, I’m aware, but my point is that I can see so clearly that there’s a moment, a moment I keep missing, where you have to push that shame aside. Where you have to, in order to succeed, truly not care and not want to be “normal.” And I’m really not sure I know how to do that. I know that I produced some work last year that I’m very proud of, that I went places I couldn’t have gone before. I wrote stories like “Espionage” and “Punching Bag.” Now I’m coming up with all sorts of titles that tickle me so much I flesh them out. I’m getting back to the non-fiction that is what I really want to be doing. But still there is a part of me that is always tempted to just hit delete, not just on this blog, but on this creature I’ve created who I can’t seem to get away from. She’s me but…not entirely. Maybe that’s why one of the people I love spending time with the most is one who’s created a truly new life for herself, one that is so far removed from what I could read about her online it’s like she’s two different people.

I know that there are plenty of people out there, because I know them, I’m friends with them, I’ve gotten to know them, who get that there is more to anyone than what you read about them online, who can make sense of the fact that someone like, um, me, might be fearless in some ways and scared as can be in others. I am working toward getting toward a place where I don’t want to be like everyone else, because even if I did, I think it’s too late for that. I can’t really put the sex writing genie back in the bottle and ultimately I don’t want to. That genie has opened so many doors for me and has also pushed me to grow and embrace this person I never expected to become. I want this to be the year I don’t fuck things up, the one year with no regrets around assignments, no burned bridges, no horror stories. Maybe not everything will work out, but it won’t be because I was so afraid of being different, looked at, noticed, that I didn’t try.

*I don't think it's a coincidence that this quote is from her instruction to "be vulnerable." See my "Be as vulnerable as you possibly can."

When "impossible" isn't just in quotes, but in your head

I blogged about my “Six Impossible Things Before 2012,” my version of New Year’s resolutions, but really ongoing, day-to-day life tasks that normal people seem to have accomplished, like not bouncing checks, that I haven’t mastered yet. I didn't title it that way, but in my head, "impossible" was in quotes, because if I truly believed those tasks were impossible, I wouldn't have set them for myself. They are fucking hard, is what they are, they often seem/feel impossible, but they are not truly impossible. I am so good at dooming myself to the worst case scenario that I forget that some people actually look to themselves to step up and create their own best case scenario, no matter how bad their present one is. I want to be like those people. This is a case where obviously actions speak louder than words; see the last paragraph of my essay, linked below. Do It Anyway indeed.

For my second piece at The Nervous Breakdown, "No Sugar in My Bowl, No $1,000 in My Pocket: The Art of Self-Sabotage," I wrote long (too long perhaps) about what happens when “impossible” is not in quotes, but when you self-sabotage yourself into impossibility. I tend to do it with the big pricey things—law school, big anthologies, while meanwhile, yes, writing for free or cheap, I’m totally there. I have many problems and I’m trying to own up to them and be a better person. Not there yet, but baby steps.

"When I’m editing a piece, I think how can this be more true?"

I just finished reading Teresa Strasser's excellent memoir Exploiting My Baby: A Memoir of Pregnancy & Childbirth and will be posting a proper review soon, but I thought it was far and away one of the best parenting memoirs. I was going to say "right up there with Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions" and then almost didn't, because no, it's not like Operating Instructions in tone, but in gut honesty, in saying things that most other mommy memoirs aren't, Teresa is doing it. Like this part that I tabbed:

Breast-feeding easily is the equivalent of having a big dick--no one will admit how good it feels, because it's really arbitrary and in now way means one is more of a man--but when that baby just takes to the boob, no pain, no trouble, I feel like I have a huge, swinging dick. I may have ben so-so on nursing, and put off by all the wacky zealots who promote it, but I must admit, it fives me confidence.

I loved that analogy, and it also reminded me that I can't remember the last time I read a man writing honestly about penis size.

I loved what she told LAist:

I think writing is the only one of those three where I have a knack. I’m not the fanciest writer, but I think I’m able to be honest. When I’m editing a piece, I think how can this be more true? There’s something to be said for that even though my prose is pretty mediocre.

I'm very stuck with my writing lately - fiction, nonfiction. I have all these ideas but none of them seem to come to fruition and then I think, "That idea sucks." And I know part of it is just fear, cold, heart-clenching fear. There are so many things you're not supposed to say, and all those could've-should've essays I didn't write for the VIP anthologies, and now there's...today. Just hours for me and my computer and if I can motivate, the gym, because I'm also trying to lose 30 pounds, but that is another story. For now, I too want to know how to be more honest, in my fiction and my nonfiction. I'm so tired of my constantly questioning myself brain, my ways of talking myself out of everything until I'm left with nothing, no words, just blankness.

I'm also reading Dinty W. Moore's Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction and I like his approach, like that he takes even a phrase like "write what you know" and turns it on its head.